Bhutan

Bhutan is a landlocked kingdom in the Himalayas, with Thimphu serving as its capital and largest city. Bhutan is a small buffer state between India and China, and it is located in the eastern Himalayas mountain range. Bhutan was subjected to British patronage in 1774, and the British controlled Bhutan's foreign (and, to some degree, domestic) policies until Bhutanese independence in 1949, upon which India became Bhutan's new guardian. Bhutan remained in isolation, preserving its social and economic traditions against economic change. Hence, despite some 1968 constitutional reforms, Bhutan continued to be ruled by a theocratic elite of monks belonging to the Lamaist monastic tradition and a king. Bhutan was one of the poorest countries in the world with an average annual GDP of $170 per head in 1993, and its backward subsistence farming agriculture employed 90% of the country's working population. In the 1990s, social tensions emerged with teh growth of a community of Nepalis, who demanded equal political, social, and economic rights with the Bhutanese. In 2016, Bhutan had a population of 797,765 people.